


amber

by eichart



Series: the uncertainty of lost hope  ('17-'18 season) [4]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, probably too detailed descriptions of sunsets, set after locker clean out, this is somehow fluffy and melancholy at the same time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-20 22:11:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14270610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eichart/pseuds/eichart
Summary: Jack and Sam say goodbye for the summer.





	amber

**Author's Note:**

> This is set some evening soon after the 17-18 Sabres locker cleanout. Two disclaimers before you start:
> 
> 1) I started writing this way before locker clean out and thought the weather would be a bit... warmer. I know no one cares but this actually really bothers me so I had to say it.
> 
> 2) I live on Lake Ontario, not Lake Erie so apologies if the descriptions of sunsets are wrong.
> 
> Header lyrics are from Boyce Avenue's cover of "Perfect" by Ed Sheeran. Enjoy!!

_ we were just kids when we fell in love _

_ not knowing what it was _

_ how will I give you up this time? _

…

Their townhouse has an emerald lawn that runs right into Lake Erie. On windier days, the water roughs up and sends waves hurtling against rocky shores in brutal surges. On clear ones, when they’re around to see it, the sun melts into the water to turn it molten orange with streaks of dusty pink faded out into almost pitch-darkened navy. Some call it beautiful; Jack, even with the memory of Boston streets paved in gold, isn’t really inclined to disagree.

It’s easy to remember the first time they watched the sunset fade into the water of their new city: him and Sam standing too close, arms just brushing, on Caber’s patio as they ate lasagna off paper plates. It’s easy to want that easy warmth in his stomach again. But most days, they’re not around to see it –too busy with the ice at Keybank and dinner at some cozy restaurant that knows them too well. It’s okay though, because while the lake sunsets are gorgeous, they’re not the only beautiful thing in Jack’s life.

Some evening after locker clean out, the sun sets into the clear lake horizon like this: soft and amber and a tad bit melancholy, the orange deepening to blood red as the sun creeps close to the horizon as if to mourn their exit though it’s not really like they ever had an entrance to begin with.

Jack doesn’t watch it. Instead he remains inside, too busy to contemplate as he stuffs clothes into suitcases in the bronze light that filters through windows and causes shadows to lengthen.

When he tires of his haphazard activity, clothes still chaotically half-belched from yawning suitcase mouths, Jack walks barefoot through the quiet halls of their house in search of Sam –in search of the warmth of a comforting touch, in search of some reminder that being alone isn’t an option, in search of–

–something.

The blank halls seem to shiver in his presence, as if somehow knowing they would soon sit abandoned for three months.

He finds Sam exactly where he expects to, barefoot and solemn on neatly cut flagstone, a silent figure with hands deep in pocket contemplating something or another in the stillness of their last night. The screen door slides nearly noiselessly when Jack pushes at it and steps out onto the patio. It’s dark out now –the lake almost like glass save for the slight disturbance by a breeze that holds less the promise of summer and more too many reminders of winter.

Jack breathes in, damp air like velvet settling in his lungs, flagstones like new ice beneath his toes. His fingers barely graze Sam’s arm as he settles to stand next to him. “Hey—” says Jack.

“—Hey.” Sam turns, smile faint in the dark but just as soft as his greeting.

There’s not much left to say now. Locker cleanout always seems to force too many words to the surface, long-winded questions that demand long-winded answers that both say too much and not enough at the same time. Jack knows he’s said more than his piece, let all these things building up inside him out in a torrent of words strung together the best he can. But there’s no words to properly capture the feeling of inadequacy, the disappointment that hangs heavy, how next year is going to be better (and it will be –it must be even if he drags them all up himself).

This season is over: capped with an unsatisfying and disappointing bow. And now for Jack there’s this instead: quiet understanding, the knowledge that the person beside you gets this in not so many words. Jack sighs, hands buried deep in his pockets, chin dropping to his chest to give a nice stretch in his neck. He’s tired, bruised and barely holding it together, and maybe now, he finally lets himself realize that.

Sam breathes out next to him, barely audible against the lake lapping at the shore. Their arms just brushing, Sam extends his gaze to the sky, centered on the stars trembling in almost placid water, on the moon almost full but not quite. “I’m going to miss this.” He says.

It’s quiet for a beat more, the comfortable kind that comes with a backdrop of soothing waves. “Yeah—” breathes Jack, head turning to take in the curve of Sam’s profile. He draws his hand across the tenseness in the back of his neck in a quiet movement. Another beat passes and staring at the moonlight reflected in Sam’s eyes, Jack feels as if he can hear both of their heartbeats. “Yeah –me too.”

Jack never thought Buffalo would ever feel like home. There was this city, this team that only took him at second best; there was this Boston boy, angry and bitter with a desire to prove –and somehow, they fell perfectly together. Because now –caught in this moment, the lake with gentle waves lapping the shore, Sam standing on their patio silhouetted in moonlight, soft smiles that say more than words do—

\--this feels like home.

Boston has always held Jack’s strongest roots, but now he isn’t so sure. Jack can feel this down to his toes –how he’s here for the long haul to make the dreams he’s had a reality, how the feeling of  _ rightness _ settles along every fiber of muscle, how there’s a touch of a smile on his lips that he didn’t even know was there.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his bags already packed in his room, boxes in the kitchen, and plastic totes in the dining room they’ve used three times this year. But it comes with the territory, with the lives they live and the contracts they sign –the feeling of temporary things, uncertain futures, and summers spent scattered to the wind (just waiting to see who will be there to fall back together come summer’s end).

Still there’s something different about this night, about thinking of locking the door behind them and sharing an Uber to the airport with the key to their house cold against his chest.

Goodbye has never seemed to hold such high stakes.

Sam says nothing.

“Hey,” says Jack, shoulder nudging against Sam’s. “—it’s not forever.”

“It’s—” Jack can’t read Sam’s face, can read the hesitation in his voice, can read between the lines how scared he is, “—maybe not.”

“ _ We’ll _ be back,” Jack says, and it sounds something like a promise.

He’s never been good at those –promises aren’t the kind of things you should make when your future lies on a clock constantly ticking down, down, down. Promises aren’t the kind of things you make when you’re better at breaking them.

And yet—

_ You and me, huh, Sammy? _

That sounds so long ago but Jack remembers it like yesterday –remembers this soft-spoken Vancouver kid that meshed too well with a loud boy from Boston, remembers that spark of hope at the end of the first season –that future they thought they could see so fucking clearly.

He can still see that sometimes; still wants it most days. Dangerously so.

_ You and me. _

Jack’s chin drops back to his chest, eyes shut as he lets out a long breath. “We’ll be back.” He says again, and it’s more tired this time, as much a declaration for himself than it is for Sam.  _ He’ll be back. _

“Yeah—” says Sam simply, but he doesn’t quite sound like he believes it. Jack doesn’t blame him.

Jack can speak odes to the feeling of being wanted –he can speak to the sinking feeling of being a consolation prize, of being second best, of not being enough and wanting to be more. But right now, Jack also has the luxury of being safe, of being granted an eternal stay in this city with this team in some twisted form of immortality. Perhaps not forever, but right now eight years sounds like forever the same way three had sounded like all the time in the world.

Sam has the luxury of waiting, of contracts and money and business.

And Jack knows this is a business. Success is measured in W’s and percentages and playoff appearances and cups, not friendships, and he blames no one for that. He’s already gotten plenty of practice in saying goodbye: McGinn, Matty Mo, Evander, soon –no. He doesn’t want to think about that, about half-baked possibilities, about how goodbye’s are never easy and how  _ this _ would be harder than every past one he’s ever said combined.

He rather think about this moment hanging suspended between them, about Sam still within arm’s reach and the moonlight that bleeds over everything to make edges fuzzy. Jack doesn’t think this is a dream, but he wants to stay in it like one anyway. He wants it so much it aches down to fingertips suddenly grasped tight in a fist.

Jack straightens up again, an open hand offered at Sam. “Come with me?” Sam tilts his head in quiet confusion, but silently puts his hand in Jack’s, linking their fingers together.

The grass presses cold and soft against Jack’s bare feet as he guides them out into the yard. The mowers haven’t come to tame the freshly growing grass yet, and the green blades now black in the darkness stand a bit too long. Sam’s fingers against his own press firm and a bit too much on this side of cool.

“What are we doing, Jack?”

Jack looks back into guileless eyes, the briefest of smiles pulling at his mouth. “C’mon—” he says.

There’s a ten-foot drop at the edge of their lawn where dirt gives way to pebbles and gravel being slowly worn smooth. Jack brings them to a halt a few feet up from the bank where the waves whisper their constant rhythmic sound a bit louder –wiping away time with each crest, each scurry back into the lake.

They hadn’t bought the house for the lakefront view, hadn’t cared about more than the proximity to the rink and Caber’s good homestyle cooking. He remembers that well, the day they picked this house in the middle of things moving too fast. He remembers a lot of things from the past three years too well; so many first times beneath his hands: the first time setting off the fire alarm, the first time with Sam above him and the night pressing around them, the first time they sleepily danced in the kitchen as the coffee maker brewed away far too slowly.

The last time they’d danced, it was in Factor’s backyard, not quite sober and partly as a joke. The air had been truly warm then, a bit too humid and heavy with this thing making them drunk called hope –something that fizzled out long before the good weather did). Before that, it had been summer too in the too dark party after the Psyche’s wedding. Jack remembers that well too, the sweet smell of champagne and the way Sam laughed too easily into Jack’s shoulder, how everything seemed to hang in a blissful haze he’d thought he’d never wake up from.

Sam comes easily toward him now when Jack tugs at his hand and slides his own palm up around the small of Sam’s back. The weight of Sam’s hand on his shoulder is familiar; the way they fit together is familiar. It’s like someone once said: they instinctively know where to find each other –always.

“No music.” Says Sam with another curious tilt of the head.

“Do we need it?”

“Suppose not.”

Jack’s feet are getting uncomfortably cold in the grass, but Sam is warm in his arms –and they’re together, at least for now.

_ I need you. I need you to stay. I can’t do this without you. _

_ Don’t leave me. _

They’re all there, stuck in his throat and on the tip of his tongue.

“Don’t step on my toes.” Jack says instead, but it comes out wrong, all rough and sentimental and too far off the joking note he was aiming for.

Sam says nothing, a breathless sort of laugh soft in the darkness –but the fingers on Jack’s shoulder tighten and that’s response enough for Jack. They’d never needed as many words to communicate. It’s always been head taps and head tilts in games and after goals, raised brows and half smiles across the chaos of the dressing room –it’s too tight fingers and shut eyes and quietly moving steps in the front lawn of their townhouse, a heartbeat pressed between them.

Half-steps fall slower and slower until they’re hardly moving anymore, caught in the center of this web, waves crashing on one side, their empty house full of uncertainties on the other.

Sam drops Jack’s hand in favor of letting his hands slide around to Jack’s neck, the movement bringing them even closer. Jack can feel both of their heartbeats now, pulses steady through warn t-shirt fabric. Sam’s eyes are closed, breath long and even, their foreheads just touching.

“I was wrong.” Sam says softly, too close, too quiet to be anything but a confession.

_ Oh?  _ Jack wants to say, but no words come out.

“It’s not this that I’ll –I’ll miss.” Jack can feel Sam’s words against his lips, darkness pressing like grey velvet around them. His breath stutters between them and Sam keeps talking. “It’s you –it’s always been you.”

They’re so close now, a twitch of movement to his left would bring their noses to brush against each other, and maybe  _ this _ is what Jack misses most back in Boston. Not the hype of the arena, Caber’s homemade lasagna they’ve eaten too many times, the smell of Cheerios, or wings at Barbill. It’s this: the completeness of moments, the ebb and flow between tension and comfort.  _ It’s always been you _ , says Sam and Jack feels that deep in the thud of his own heart, in this anxiety that’s carved its own spot in the furrows of his brain. It’s Sam in the middle of all this who softens the edges of his world.

“I love you.” Says Jack.

Sam laughs, a huff of a sound that still somehow holds a note of wonder as if he doesn’t know how Jack sends every day thinking about how he doesn’t deserve him. Sam has his fingers in Jack’s curls and there’s another quiet laugh, and despite everything, in the middle of all this, finally, Jack feels like he has something.

When Sam kisses him it’s in an unhurried way they haven’t in a long time –maybe ever. Not since they started this odd push and pull around each other, colliding too briefly, too quickly to make anything of it. But now, it’s everything.

Jack’s been told he kisses like he wants something and right now, all he wants is this. All he wants is Sam and certainty: Sam at his side, on his wing, slotted into this perfect place they promised they’d build here in a city still trying to find its way. He wants—

—to make this home.

Jack wonders if this moment too will be caught somehow in the moonlight, a perfectly preserved memory like an insect in amber. Sam tucks his head into the spot between Jack’s head and shoulder, breath even and warm against his skin.

“I’m really going to miss you.” Whispers Sam.

Jack swallows, lets himself breathe in tempo with the slow rolling waves crashing against their rocky shore, arms perhaps tighter around Sam than they should be. “Me too.” He whispers.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! As always, please drop a kudo or comment if you enjoyed and you can come chat with me [here](http://www.eichhart.tumblr.com).


End file.
